I’m in Croatia working with Teachers and students from all over Europe.

 One of the apps I’ve been keen to push out is the Awesome Bossjock. This is fast becoming one of my fave apps. Ta to @joedale for the tip when we met at the Apple Teacher Institute in Malvern in the Easter hols!

I’m using The Figure app to make the music idents and then syncing a set of special sound effects via iTunes to the class iPads. It’s one of those apps that just nails it.

I will do a more detailed demo and explanation in my next post that aims to:  Rip the lid off iPad Audio in the classroom, no hyperbolic shameful, self-promotion there then ;-)

Hope you like this demo and the little story that goes with it.

Live from Croatia, keepin’ it real (in cheesy DJ voice)!

I will be writing more in the next few days about Audio in the classroom, how to manage Garageband Audio projects with Apps like Figure and BossJock and the super publishing space Soundcloud.

Here are some examples….

It’s meDrive! As they say in Yorkshire…. Kanex are aiming this tool directly at schools. The blurb on the Kanex site says…. “Ideal for classrooms looking for an alternative to Dropbox and other cloud based storage. Now you can easily share and collaborate iWork files with local users in classrooms or work”. What is it? - a device for attaching USB hard drives and pen drives to the school network so that you can have students hand work in directly from apps like Pages, Keynote, Numbers and apps that offer export by web DAV. How does it work? Basically, plug the box into the school network connect a USB drive, download the free meDrive app - this appears as an “open in option for many apps. You can also move content from the camera roll to the app and vice versa. From the app you can move things to the USB drive on the school network. In essence, wifi network + meDrive + a USB drive = simple file server solution for IOS devices and computers. It is small! and very nicely boxed! It is well made and robust. It comes with both a USB cable for providing power and a short ethernet cable for attaching to a router. There is no software to install. Initially, I tried plugging both ethernet and USB cables into a current Apple Airport Express, but the Express doesn’t provide enough power for the meDrive. It might be worth Kanex pointing this out to users! It did however power up quickly via my Time Capsule. Having launched the meDrive app and hit the + button to add a device low and behold the device was networked and accessible. Now I just needed a USB hard drive. I tried a host powered 500GB USB drive. It didn’t mount as there wasn’t enough power. In effect the USB drive is piggybacking the meDrive which itself requires USB power, so I then tried an older 320GB mains powered USB drive. I really expected this to work but no. Having searched high and low for a USB pen drive (having proclaimed them dead since the arrival of the iPad;-) - I found an old 2GB and a relatively recent 8GB drive and both connected and mounted. Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Explain Everything and Scanner Pro all worked very sweetly over webDav once the settings had been entered within the apps. Likewise the Apple apps opened files over webDav and Explain Everything opened a Powerpoint file. I tried some audio recordings. The Hokusai Audio editor sat well long side the meDrive app. I exported files from propellerhead’s Figure to Hokusai as Mp4 and WAV and from there to the USB drive via the meDrive app. Being able to share audio files has been pain and whilst Soundcloud is great for publishing audio , being able to share locally as opposed to over the web is great. The “open in” option is also very handy, but of course not as direct as Web Dav, as you have to open the file into the meDrive app and then move it to the USB storage within the app. From the Mac the drive was accessible via the obvious Go menu and connect to server. One quirk was that the documentation describes the path as http://medrive.local when the default (even after a reset) is http://mydrive.local. A key thing to point out is that as an early adopter, the unit has shipped with version 0.44 firmware. There is a new version 1.1 that might improve larger mains powered USB connectivity - something that schools would want alongside the smaller pen drive option. However, Safari and Chrome couldn’t access the device getting 404 errors even though the user and password were the default settings. I have raised a ticket with the guys at Kanex. Overall I like it - but I need larger USB drives to connect especially for archiving ebooks and and video projects. Kanex need to be clear to teachers and all users as to limitations of host powered USB drives and available USB power options for the meDrive unit. Hopefully a firmware update will fix it! It’s very early days for this bit of kit, but Kanex really have produced something that will be of interest for iPad users in schools, that want easy plug and play access to USB storage over the local wifi. In my rash haste to buy, the device shipped from the USA, so the website price of £79 was actually £99. I guess this is due to import charges, so maybe buy one from your fave UK based Apple Education supplier! Would I buy one for school? - Yes! UPDATE - The very helpful people at Kanex helped me update the firmware and the meDrive is now connected to a host powered 1TB USB 3.0 Freecom drive. Kanex tell me that they have up to 30 staff concurrently connected to meDrive in their offices. How this stacks up against 30 odd data hungry students webdaving and moving files by “Open in” remains to be seen. But for the money and simplicity - I’m liking it a lot!
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It’s meDrive! As they say in Yorkshire….

Kanex are aiming this tool directly at schools. The blurb on the Kanex site says….

“Ideal for classrooms looking for an alternative to Dropbox and other cloud based storage. Now you can easily share and collaborate iWork files with local users in classrooms or work”.

What is it? - a device for attaching USB hard drives and pen drives to the school network so that you can have students hand work in directly from apps like Pages, Keynote, Numbers and apps that offer export by web DAV.

How does it work? Basically, plug the box into the school network connect a USB drive, download the free meDrive app - this appears as an “open in option for many apps. You can also move content from the camera roll to the app and vice versa. From the app you can move things to the USB drive on the school network.

In essence, wifi network + meDrive + a USB drive = simple file server solution for IOS devices and computers.

It is small! and very nicely boxed! It is well made and robust.

It comes with both a USB cable for providing power and a short ethernet cable for attaching to a router. There is no software to install. Initially, I tried plugging both ethernet and USB cables into a current Apple Airport Express, but the Express doesn’t provide enough power for the meDrive. It might be worth Kanex pointing this out to users! It did however power up quickly via my Time Capsule.

Having launched the meDrive app and hit the + button to add a device low and behold the device was networked and accessible. Now I just needed a USB hard drive.

I tried a host powered 500GB USB drive. It didn’t mount as there wasn’t enough power. In effect the USB drive is piggybacking the meDrive which itself requires USB power, so I then tried an older 320GB mains powered USB drive. I really expected this to work but no.

Having searched high and low for a USB pen drive (having proclaimed them dead since the arrival of the iPad;-) - I found an old 2GB and a relatively recent 8GB drive and both connected and mounted.

Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Explain Everything and Scanner Pro all worked very sweetly over webDav once the settings had been entered within the apps. Likewise the Apple apps opened files over webDav and Explain Everything opened a Powerpoint file.

I tried some audio recordings. The Hokusai Audio editor sat well long side the meDrive app. I exported files from propellerhead’s Figure to Hokusai as Mp4 and WAV and from there to the USB drive via the meDrive app. Being able to share audio files has been pain and whilst Soundcloud is great for publishing audio , being able to share locally as opposed to over the web is great.

The “open in” option is also very handy, but of course not as direct as Web Dav, as you have to open the file into the meDrive app and then move it to the USB storage within the app.

From the Mac the drive was accessible via the obvious Go menu and connect to server. One quirk was that the documentation describes the path as http://medrive.local when the default (even after a reset) is http://mydrive.local.

A key thing to point out is that as an early adopter, the unit has shipped with version 0.44 firmware. There is a new version 1.1 that might improve larger mains powered USB connectivity - something that schools would want alongside the smaller pen drive option. However, Safari and Chrome couldn’t access the device getting 404 errors even though the user and password were the default settings. I have raised a ticket with the guys at Kanex.

Overall I like it - but I need larger USB drives to connect especially for archiving ebooks and and video projects.

Kanex need to be clear to teachers and all users as to limitations of host powered USB drives and available USB power options for the meDrive unit. Hopefully a firmware update will fix it!

It’s very early days for this bit of kit, but Kanex really have produced something that will be of interest for iPad users in schools, that want easy plug and play access to USB storage over the local wifi.

In my rash haste to buy, the device shipped from the USA, so the website price of £79 was actually £99. I guess this is due to import charges, so maybe buy one from your fave UK based Apple Education supplier!

Would I buy one for school? - Yes!

UPDATE - The very helpful people at Kanex helped me update the firmware and the meDrive is now connected to a host powered 1TB USB 3.0 Freecom drive.

Kanex tell me that they have up to 30 staff concurrently connected to meDrive in their offices. How this stacks up against 30 odd data hungry students webdaving and moving files by “Open in” remains to be seen. But for the money and simplicity - I’m liking it a lot!

This app could be really useful for collaborative homework. Sketchshare although it requires Game Centre (which will invariably be blocked in school) it won’t be blocked at home. So collaborative projects, that need to be developed live “on the fly” via annotations/drawings and images can be created. The fact that audio is also live means that real speaking a listening across the 4 iPads supports the process.

The saving of transparent PNG versions of the files will also be cool for other apps like Keynote and Pages!

I can’t wait to use this app in and out of school!

Photoshop Touch for the iPad

When the iPad was born, I’m sure I wasn’t alone in thinking that Photoshop on an iPad might be interesting, but now I’m not so sure.

 

I use a whole range of instant gratification apps almost like a tool kit to process an image. These apps include - Snapseed, Phoster, Type drawing, Background Eraser, Tiltshift, Percolater, Pixlromatic amongst others. Maybe I’m sub-consciously rebuilding Photoshop from a bunch of disparate apps? If I keep adding to the tools, the sum total cost could be close to Photoshop Elements @£60 ish! Great for iTunes revenue, but not great for my bank balance.


 So let’s download the beast… 

At £6 it’s not cheap or really expensive (depending on what it offers). It is light in Mbs weighing in at 50Mb - I’d say good job Adobe! on the small footprint. 


You can directly import images from the “Local Photos” option. This is what iPad users would call the Camera Roll. Of course it ran first on Android so the terms of reference mean I don’t feel so at home.

There’s also access to Adobe’s Creative Cloud, the built in camera, Google and your Facebook account. Interestingly, one image I immediately wanted was in my iCloud stream and that wasn’t obviously accessible neither is Dropbox.

On the upside, the Google import is direct from Google images with a search option as opposed to linking with your Google account. It does offer a search by colour! and also by usage rights which is great again for educators. 

With my “Apple head” on I thought “forget the handy tutorial”, I can figure this out!  Guess what? I could load an image, I could add layers and text but I couldn’t intuitively really manipulate anything with ease.

Back to the in built tutorial and hey there’s a whole series of 13 activities. These are very well put together offering a whole range of image editing options. I’ve opted for the clean up background tutorial. Wow! It’s simple and easy to follow with the on screen prompts. I’m not a big lover of a manual with apps. For me things have to be obvious, but I am making an exception here as these tasks are not simple gratification taps, like many iPad Photo apps.

There is some skill involved in this. Skill and the iPad don’t have to mutually exclusive!


Not sure why we need bikini clad babes - but Adobe obviously think it’s a great idea.

More critically for iPad creatives, it does save Transparent PNGs. These will look gorgeous in Keynote, Pages, Explain Everything and Avid Studio as an “overlay” - oops Avid Studio is kind of quirky/cool on the iPad, but that’s another story!

PT does also offer an interesting ”Enable Presentation Mode” in the preferences that creates a red visual laser pointer - this again is great for “Sage on Stage” sessions. My fellow ADE’s are gonna love that “bad boy feature”.

So first impressions were not great, but then RTFM and it all made sense. It was a bit of a snub to Apple by releasing the Photoshop Touch app on Android before iOS. I’d love to know the download stats for the two platforms.  I bet after 1 day IOS is already higher than Android.

As regards workflow it seems iPad bound. In that there is no import and export of .PSD files. Is that an issue? - I’m not sure that it is for most people that are also happy to work within the limits of 1600x1600 pixels!

Overall I think this is a great app for longer and more meaningful digital imaging learning journeys or should that be digital roadtrips? ;-)  It feels very android in terms of interface and a little clunky but it does for and it has got a reasonable set of tools.

I am liking it. It could be improved. I’m thinking secondary/high schools and planning. The 1600x1600 limitation means that some outcomes won’t look good on that new LED you’ve just purchased for the school foyer.